For a year, Decoratelier Jozef Wouters worked with Open Arts House Globe Aroma on Underneath Which Rivers Flow. A group of women and men – builders, poets and dreamers – met weekly in the Decoratelier in Molenbeek. Together, they built stories, a secret garden full of wormholes to unsuspected worlds.

Under the title Hyperpresent, five contemporary thinkers will give a talk on a new idea that they introduced themselves. Afterwards, they will engage in a conversation with philosopher Laurent De Sutter – who curated this series. American architect, urbanist, writer, and professor at Yale University Keller Easterling will talk this evening about the Extrastatecraft.

Michiel Vandevelde goes in search of traces of the legacy of May ’68, along with a new generation of young people. Will they open new perspectives on the future when they research half a century of history in a wild choreography of iconic images?

Rétrospective is Jérôme Bel’s subjective reflection on his own work. He chose eighteen dance fragments from his video archive. Through meticulous editing, he has used them to reconstruct the development of his thinking about dance. By emphasizing the links between dance and politics, he foregrounds central themes in his work. After the film screening, there will be an extended conversation with the choreographer.

It is the most sensational event of the past year: the massive protest of young people against the climate impasse. This Generation Hope holds up a mirror to politicians and has catapulted the climate crisis to the centre of our social debate. Ecopolis 2019 is a special edition for but especially with #GenerationHope, on the theme of a sustainable future on a liveable planet.

Shown and Told is a dynamic performance-collage founded on structured improvisation and associative leaps. It is an encounter between choreographer and dancer Meg Stuart and writer/performance artist Tim Etchells (Forced Entertainment). Together, they explore the relationship between movement, images and the body as a performance instrument.

In the late 1920s, Nâzım Hikmet introduced free verse to Turkish poetry, and he was thus the first modern Turkish poet. He wrote the majority of Human Landscapes, his magnum opus, while in prison. The five hundred-page epic was only published posthumously, divided into five ‘books’. Michiel Vandevelde staged Book I last year, commissioned by steierische herbst. Book II now follows.

In the late 1920s, Nâzım Hikmet introduced free verse to Turkish poetry, and he was thus the first modern Turkish poet. He wrote the majority of Human Landscapes, his magnum opus, while in prison. The five hundred-page epic was only published posthumously, divided into five ‘books’. Michiel Vandevelde staged Book I last year, commissioned by steierische herbst. Book II now follows.

During a meditative crying marathon that lasts almost an hour, two futuristic female characters question the mechanisms that turn personal emotions into political phenomena. In a choreography that uses video and large sheets of paper – simultaneously protest signs and drying laundry – their tears of weakness become an act of political power.

Why is it important to cast a spotlight on the marginalized history of feminism in Romania and Eastern Europe? And what might this mean for our collective, historical consciousness With a collage of feminist voices, artistic gestures, historical avant-garde, and traditional songs, Eszter Salamon focuses on Romanian histories.

Under the title Hyperpresent, five contemporary thinkers will give a talk on a new idea that they introduced themselves. Afterwards, they will engage in a conversation with philosopher Laurent De Sutter – who curated this series. Boris Groys is an art critic, media theorist and philosopher. He is professor at New York University. His work is dedicated to the exploration of the link between socialism, modernism, contemporary art and media and technology.

While many creators praise the empty stage as the central place for fantasy, in Physics and Phantasma it becomes compulsive and traumatic. The vacuum must at all costs by filled with something! To this end, Iggy Lond Malmborg takes you on a journey to random and dark corners of your imagination: the place where this solo takes shape.

This talk draws on interviews conducted with staff and students who have made complaints within universities that relate to unfair, unjust or unequal working conditions and to abuses of power such as sexual and racial harassment. It approaches complaint as a form of diversity work: the ordinary and often painstaking labour of trying to transform institutions so they are more accommodating. Sara Ahmed explores the significance of how complaints happen “behind closed doors,” and shows how doors are often closed even when they appear to be opened.

In this humorous and passionate monologue performed by Einat Tuchman, Orla Barry explores the boundaries of art, gender, and the rural everyday. She describes the experiences of an artist who returns from the city to her rural roots and is reborn as a hybrid ‘farmer-artist’. Coincidence, humour and a subtle language game are the ingredients of a production that blends oral historiography with personal memories.

Does gender have a voice, does skin have a race? Using drag, vogueing, striptease, YouTube tutorials as well as the triadic ballet by Oskar Schlemmer, seven bodies and many more objects try out new constellations, like surrealist ready-mades. With a great sense of irony, Escape Act presents hyper-stereotyped gender identities, only to deconstruct them completely.

Under the title Hyperpresent, five contemporary thinkers will give a talk on a new idea that they introduced themselves. Afterwards, they will engage in a conversation with philosopher Laurent De Sutter – who curated this series. Graham Harman is professor of philosophy at SCI-Arc in Los Angeles. His work on the metaphysics of object led to the development of Object-Oriented Ontology. He is a central figure in the Speculative Realism movement in contemporary philosophy.

In this performance about information fast food, vanity, fiction and the urge for affirmation, the artistic duo Sarah & Charles goes in search of the ultimate form of submission. In an age in which social media and the internet are expanding our view of the world, our minds appear to be narrowing emotionally. The performers invite you to a creative wellness centre where you can put your decision-making on hold.

KAOS develops artistic projects with a link to psychiatry. In late 2018, the artistic duo had a residency there, resulting in three interviews about psychosis. Sarah & Charles and KAOS are now sitting down for a conversation.

Under the title Hyperpresent, five contemporary thinkers will give a talk on a new idea that they introduced themselves. Afterwards, they will engage in a conversation with philosopher Laurent De Sutter – who curated this series. Rosi Braidotti is a philosopher and feminist theorist. Her work explores the transformation of the subjective induced by the technical and political shifts of the present.

Celestial Sorrow is Meg Stuart’s first collaboration with the Indonesian visual artist Jompet Kuswidananto. Based in collective memories and fictitious traumas, the duo create a world of light and movement that is inhabited by three performers and two musicians. The show premiered at the Kaaistudios in 2018 and is moving to the main stage of Kaaitheater for this reprise.

WORKING TITLE FESTIVAL — Kasper Vandenberghe climbs on a scaffolding clad in a protective suit and then drops down like a rock. It is calculated recklessness. It is a poetic search for how vulnerable we can still allow ourselves to be and how we can understand vulnerability as a force. It is dancing on the loose rope between two deeply human desires: the desire for balance versus a bottomless leap into the unknown.

WORKING TITLE FESTIVAL — We are shaped by an infinity of reflections, like a rainbow. This immersive installation – literally – reflects our differences and multiple identities. Inspired by The Conference of the Birds by the Persian poet Farid ud-Din Attar, Fakoor reflects on the myth of a clear-cut national identity and the celebration of difference.

WORKING TITLE FESTIVAL — Do people treat plants with enough respect? What happens when plants break out of the background of our living rooms? Gosie Vervloessem calls on a number of horror movies in which plants frighten us. Sometimes they attack us head-on, but often the horror lies in ominously waving branches and rustling bushes. According to the artist the exploitative human-vegetal relation comes to a climax in the nature reserve, the plantation and the botanical garden. Places with a direct link to a colonial past.

WORKING TITLE FESTIVAL — Within a series of small compositions, bodies are placed and displaced in relation to each other. Playing with weight and balance, they counterbalance and shape the space between them. In the margin of the performance, Wouter Krokaert also shows the visual work that underlies it. What is explored in one area is reinforced and supplemented in another, across the boundaries of disciplines.